everyone just watches baki cause lol imagination lol stupid shit and yeah that's fun sometimes but i unironically love the maximum tournament, it's one of the better anime tournaments. it and the promise of baki fighting yujiro someday was good enough to string me along all the way until that fight happened, way after i should've dropped it lmao

i wish katsumi beat retsu and fought baki in the semifinals instead of them both being used as fodder to show how badass baki is. i mean, a semifinal fight in a 5 round tournament basically got OFFSCREENED cause it was in baki's head. i've never seen that before. katsumi and baki had a genuine rivalry and sometimes the twist ending isn't the best one. but maybe if i read it again it'll be better than i remembered. and other than that i can't think of anything i didn't like.

i love the fact that it's people with real fighting styles representing real cities and places. the fight with chiharu and iron michael where they say they're here for the kids of tokyo and the kids of brooklyn felt so raw. like even if a character's not great i can see someone getting invested in him just cause he's representing THEIR country or THEIR martial art.

the rest of the series is just spinning its wheels for 30 years and early baki takes ages to get good, it's a shame most anime fans probably won't ever see the maximum tournament.